This is half a decade old news, but I only found this out myself after it accidentally came up in conversation at the DMV. The worker would not have informed me if it hadn’t come into conversation. Every DMV photo in the United States is being used for AI facial recognition, and nobody has talked about it for years. This is especially concerning given that citizens are recently being required to update their ID to a “Real ID,” which means more people than ever before are giving away the rights to their own face.
The biggest problem with privacy issues is that people talk about it for a while, but more often than not nothing ever happens to fix the problem, it simply gets forgotten. For example, in the next few years Copilot will simply become a part of people’s lives, and people will slowly stop talking about the privacy implications. What can we even do to fight the privacy practices of giants?
Just because mass surveillance is already happening doesn’t mean we should accept it as our only option. While it’s true that governments and corporations are collecting data on us, there is still merit in pushing back against these practices. The point of privacy is not to hide everything and live in the woods, the point of privacy is to have control over what data you share, when you share it, and with whom you share it with. The problem isn’t facial recognition itself, the problem is living in the woods shouldn’t be the only way to avoid it. We should be able to opt out. What may seem fine to you is not always fine with others. That’s why threat models exist, after all.